Wireless networks and systems are becoming increasingly popular, but wireless communications are constrained due to a lack of available, interference free spectrum that may be used for reliable communications within a geographic area. Efforts have been made to identify more efficient and effective ways of utilizing radio spectrum. One technique is spectrum sharing. Sharing is most easily implemented using a management system that can identify when and where spectrum is available and direct radio access networks to use the available spectrum under certain constraints. One example of this type of approach is the management of TV whitespace. To avoid interference with digital TV broadcasts and other incumbent systems, radios that intend to use the TV whitespace are required receive a list of available channels (also referred to as a channel map or a channel list) from a designated database.
TV whitespace regulations allow for one or more channels in a graphical area to be protected from interfering use over a period of time specified in terms of a start date and time and a duration (or an end date and time). But knowledge of time by radio devices, especially mobile devices, is imprecise to the point that radio devices cannot adequately comply with protections. For example, some radio devices are capable of obtaining location information and an absolute time from the global positioning system (GPS). But these radio devices may not be capable of interpreting the device's location to adjust for factors such as time zone differences or daylight savings time. Therefore, the devices cannot accurately determine the local time to ensure compliance with any spectrum protections.